Any Pie Left:I remember seeing a similar test a few years back where the rocket went up to like 50 meters, then traveled horizontally a few hundred meters and touched down on another landing pad. Anyone else remember that, or have a link?You are referring to the DC-x:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o

Delta Clipper, that's the bunny. I was remembering a different test flight, but that's it.

Somaticasual:TheDirtyNacho: The reusable shuttle was a sound idea in theory (and still is), but in order to get the money to make it fly they needed the Air Force.

It does make you wonder what the CIA is doing with theirs. Do we have a more extensive space surveillance or space warfare program than any country is admitting? It really wouldn't surprise me if the next cold war is space dominance (and not the ICBM kind these days)

Well its better to be prepared, never know what's up there...

/that movie had great potential, just needed less lame-ass earth-side fumbling and more space nazis and earth forces clashing

Somaticasual:TheDirtyNacho: The reusable shuttle was a sound idea in theory (and still is), but in order to get the money to make it fly they needed the Air Force.

It does make you wonder what the CIA is doing with theirs. Do we have a more extensive space surveillance or space warfare program than any country is admitting? It really wouldn't surprise me if the next cold war is space dominance (and not the ICBM kind these days)

Well the Air Force has this unmanned mini-shuttle. Nobody is quite sure what it's for publicly. It has orbital missions of many months long durations.

Surveillance seems obvious, but its orbit isn't particularly interesting (or hidden), and there's no surveillance that requires a reusable space plane. I would guess its carrying out some kind of experiment or material processing that works best outside of the atmosphere and/or in low gravity.

BumpInTheNight:Somaticasual: TheDirtyNacho: The reusable shuttle was a sound idea in theory (and still is), but in order to get the money to make it fly they needed the Air Force.

It does make you wonder what the CIA is doing with theirs. Do we have a more extensive space surveillance or space warfare program than any country is admitting? It really wouldn't surprise me if the next cold war is space dominance (and not the ICBM kind these days)

Well its better to be prepared, never know what's up there...[popcultureninja.com image 482x311]

/that movie had great potential, just needed less lame-ass earth-side fumbling and more space nazis and earth forces clashing

The Coming Race looks like it's shaping up well. They also have the profits from the first movie to fund it with.

jaybeezey:TheDirtyNacho: Quantum Apostrophe: TheDirtyNacho: Still cool though as a proof of concept. We're a long way from orbit to vertical landing though. SpaceX is doing it with the individual rocket stages first.

It's still absurd. Oh look, we have to cut on payload (the part that brings profit to supposedly "private" space, yes?) so we can have enough fuel to land on our ass like in 1950s sci-fi.

I don't understand. The math is not so hard. Right now, cost of payload = fuel + whole new launch vehicle + operations

Quantum Apostrophe:jaybeezey: TheDirtyNacho: Quantum Apostrophe: TheDirtyNacho: Still cool though as a proof of concept. We're a long way from orbit to vertical landing though. SpaceX is doing it with the individual rocket stages first.

It's still absurd. Oh look, we have to cut on payload (the part that brings profit to supposedly "private" space, yes?) so we can have enough fuel to land on our ass like in 1950s sci-fi.

I don't understand. The math is not so hard. Right now, cost of payload = fuel + whole new launch vehicle + operations

Thus cost of payload goes down. They are sacrificing little payload to accomplish this. It's a cost/benefit analysis from there.

No use logic in Fark thread! Logics make Farkers moar angrier!

Can't stop the changes RAAAAAAWWWWWRRRRRR!

If it's that logical, can you explain why Lockheed, Boeing, Martin Marietta et al haven't done so in the last five decades?

Rockets aren't planes.

Oh well, Mars is 56327040000 meters away, I guess 325 is a kind of start.

Better bust out your Estes kits, eh space cadets?

Actually, at 7:36:54 (Chicago time) Mars was 227,401,287 miles away. That is roughly 365,967,000 kilometers, which would be 36,596,700,000 meters. And every minute that distance decreases by about 85.1 miles (13,695.5 meters) every minute.

That craft has never put anything into orbit like the Falcon 9 has.(Grasshopper is a modified Falcon)But I know..."It will never work!"

Who said it wouldn't work? I said it's absurd. You can make anything work once.

You guys suck at reading.

Your favorite mantra is "It will never work". And I can read just fine...I had a college level reading score in 6th grade.I'm really tired of reading your moronic tirades and negative crap. Congratulations on being the first asshole I have ever ignored on here. Adiós Space Turd...

(This is not a flight vehicle, but the internal volume and seating arrangements are real)

/ Dragon already comes with a heat shield that can withstand re-entry from lunar orbit speeds. And if it can land on its feet on earth, the Moon will be a piece of cake. SpaceX will never talk about a manned Mun mission until they're ready to fly one. Then they'll just go. These spacecraft are privately owned.

TheDirtyNacho:Surveillance seems obvious, but its orbit isn't particularly interesting (or hidden), and there's no surveillance that requires a reusable space plane. I would guess its carrying out some kind of experiment or material processing that works best outside of the atmosphere and/or in low gravity.

Its for hacking foreign satellites and maintaining our own. Its the only thing they could possibly be using it for.

Alonjar:TheDirtyNacho: Surveillance seems obvious, but its orbit isn't particularly interesting (or hidden), and there's no surveillance that requires a reusable space plane. I would guess its carrying out some kind of experiment or material processing that works best outside of the atmosphere and/or in low gravity.

Its for hacking foreign satellites and maintaining our own. Its the only thing they could possibly be using it for.

I guessing they use it to test individual tech setups before integrating them into new satellites as well. They could also use it to retrieve old satellites.

Awesome struts! Beware though, I've witnessed the terror of low FPS on launch vs struts, they are the first to go. (in terms of counting towards your ship's physics calculations vs maintaining FPS). The trick is to push that options menu item that keeps the physics vs realtime to the limit. Sure it takes 5 minutes to get a 1000 piece craft off the ground but at least it stays intact with everything working as it should.

I built a rocket ship was the main module with three solid fuel booster rocks attached to the sides, forming a pyramid. It was my first ship to make it into orbit. Not only that, but it had enough power to make it out past the moon!

Maul555:hardinparamedic: omeganuepsilon: hardinparamedic: It's just not a space thread without Quantum Apostrophe being a dick to everyone he can for no reason.

He believes he's the lone voice of reason, a wolf pack of one.

[i1.ytimg.com image 480x360]

Our shenanigans are cheeky and fun. His are cruel and tragic.

Hey guys, leave QA alone! It's not easy living life as a man without a penis...

That's not cool. Making fun of him like that. He does have one, it's just very small. In his file at the psych ward it's called Baby Dick. Apparently it's actually a medical condition. Says here that he has to sit down to pee.

Monkeyfark Ridiculous:LasersHurt: Monkeyfark Ridiculous:But I'm wondering mainly about the part where they decided to go with a powered return rather than using some kind of gliding or parachuting approach.

(I meant the weight of the fuel, not the cost.)

The powered return has a couple of reasons.

#1 it requires no additional hardware -- the entire return and landing is simply a manipulation of the normal operation of the booster.

#2 (not really discussed) SpaceX is going to be absolutely expert in powered landing software and control... which means if you can land under power on Earth, you have a system that can land anywhere else you would WANT to land (Moon, Mars, Mercury, Ganymede, etc)

Also, you should realize that the point of these launches is not the cool "oh we launched and landed"... this is a massive software engineering control tester. This launch landed with zero velocity -- they were positively accelerating at the exact moment of touch -- that's an enormously tricky thing to do and is key to doing the landing with a really tiny amount of residual fuel (ideally the booster should be completely empty at touchdown so that the vehicle weight is the barest minimum)

I saw an episode of the Thunderbirds puppet show where a rocket backed up onto the landing pad. I said, "rockets don't work that way". Except now they do. Although the Thunderbird rocket was backing in parallel to the ground.

The ONLY issue I have with recovery is the fact that rockets don't just go up to get to orbit, they head "downrange" as well, accelerating the cargo to orbital velocity. If they plan to recover the booster in another place, and bring them back, then all is well.

So far you are the only one to raise that issue. I am very interested to see how they address the "return to launch site" flight profile given that it involves doing a one-eighty without benefit of aerodynamic surfaces or countering thrust. Compare the flight profile of a regular Falcon 9 or equivalent booster with an SST RtLS abort profile. There is a point at which the downrange velocity can't be negated and potential landing sites are all downrange. The Falcon's first stage has to carry the second stage and payload to a velocity and altitude where the second stage can complete the orbital insertion. That has to be beyond any reasonable turn-around point, so a downrange landing site has to be available (and within the cross-track capabilities of the vehicle) unless a once-around profile is flown. I want to see what they have planned for this.

There is a CGI vid on the SpaceX site which shows the key points of the reusable stack. The first stage is shown touching down at the Cape. The stage does a pitch maneuver after staging to present the engines for a braking burn. This seems to indicate a once-around flight. The second stage is shown with a heat shield, which would be a necessity from orbital velocities. The Dragon is shown entering and landing without resorting to parachutes. All of these steps seem to rely on controlled free-fall to terminal velocity followed by engine braking to touchdown. It's obvious they've got the launch part down. The Grasshopper is working out the touchdown details. The math seems to indicate the part in-between is do-able. Here's hoping.

SpaceyX is doing good but they should really concentrate on launching one a month like the big boys do...

/Delta 2 could build 18 a year and launch 12-14 a year for decades all with 100% reliability.Only one of 160+ a failure-and it was spectacular and luckily not a one of a kind science mission.//D2 only took a year to develop from D1.D3 with a totally new upper stage still used on D4 only 18 months to launch. What is taking so long space X.....

They are doing tons of good things but after a all these years it's time for the PR machine to give it a rest and let their actions do the talking.

No. He has the tenor of someone who persists in rubbing a fairly valid opinion into faces until ignition is achieved. The smell is the burning of the acne cream and Cheeto dust that adorns the acolytes of the Holy Prophet Roddenberry, whose Vision is Perfect and must not be disputed.

Seriously, too many of you deserve the "Space Nutter" label with your skiffy devotion displacing any grasp of the physics and chemistry of the Real World. Look at all the Kerbal clutter in this thread. A source of amusement? Yes. A source of practical design? No.

No. He has the tenor of someone who persists in rubbing a fairly valid opinion into faces until ignition is achieved. The smell is the burning of the acne cream and Cheeto dust that adorns the acolytes of the Holy Prophet Roddenberry, whose Vision is Perfect and must not be disputed.

Seriously, too many of you deserve the "Space Nutter" label with your skiffy devotion displacing any grasp of the physics and chemistry of the Real World. Look at all the Kerbal clutter in this thread. A source of amusement? Yes. A source of practical design? No.

No. He has the tenor of someone who persists in rubbing a fairly valid opinion into faces until ignition is achieved. The smell is the burning of the acne cream and Cheeto dust that adorns the acolytes of the Holy Prophet Roddenberry, whose Vision is Perfect and must not be disputed.

Seriously, too many of you deserve the "Space Nutter" label with your skiffy devotion displacing any grasp of the physics and chemistry of the Real World. Look at all the Kerbal clutter in this thread. A source of amusement? Yes. A source of practical design? No.

Ask him where he thinks those efforts should be expended instead - then you'll get a better idea of why the rest of us set him to ignore.

You're gonna have to point out who is trying to use Kerbal as an actual design, because I don't see them.

Nor do I, but a thread that could discuss the merits and drawbacks of an actual engineering design goes off into FictionVille instead.

And get back on your main profile, QA.

I'm not QA. I think life extension is horseshiat and manned spaceflight can have long-term benefits, but nothing long enough to go to infinity and beyond. In the long run, everyone dies. As some fictional Magrathean once said, "Hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied."

Considering the recent discoveries relating to apoptosis (automatic cell death) , something we consider so fundamental to the human experience may be changing. We've got a lot of the pieces to that puzzle already - we might see life spans in the early to mid 100s become possible (if not common) over the next couple of decades. Granted, it does bring about some unique issues in society that will need to be addressed..

(not really discussed) SpaceX is going to be absolutely expert in powered landing software and control... which means if you can land under power on Earth, you have a system that can land anywhere else you would WANT to land (Moon, Mars, Mercury, Ganymede, etc)

THIS. Earth is a really hard planet to land on, due a thick atmosphere and high gravity. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere. Because Earth is so massive, and because it's "uphill" from the solar gravity well to Mars, the trip back is mostly a free ride. You can return in a very small ship, like we did from the Moon.

What also isn't discussed is the highly variable distance to Mars at opposition.

No. He has the tenor of someone who persists in rubbing a fairly valid opinion into faces until ignition is achieved. The smell is the burning of the acne cream and Cheeto dust that adorns the acolytes of the Holy Prophet Roddenberry, whose Vision is Perfect and must not be disputed.

Seriously, too many of you deserve the "Space Nutter" label with your skiffy devotion displacing any grasp of the physics and chemistry of the Real World. Look at all the Kerbal clutter in this thread. A source of amusement? Yes. A source of practical design? No.

Be nice to the southern crop farmers. The crows are harsh this time of year. They need that straw.